


Business as usual, apparently.

by officiumdefunctorum



Series: Emrys Goes on Holiday [1]
Category: Merlin (TV), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Chitauri - Freeform, Crack, Drabble, Future Fic, Gen, New York City, Pre-Slash, Unbeta'd, Waiting for Arthur, merlin goes on vacation, very pre-slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-13
Updated: 2013-08-13
Packaged: 2017-12-23 08:34:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/924163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/officiumdefunctorum/pseuds/officiumdefunctorum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He really just wanted a vacation. Couldn't he enjoy the only decent cup of tea in Manhattan without having to <i>help one of the Avengers cheat death</i>?</p><p>He should have expected it, really.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Business as usual, apparently.

**Author's Note:**

> Because Clint is just... there with his bow and arrows. Maybe Merlin rescues him one time.

_Well, this certainly isn’t the worst vacation I’ve ever had._

 

Herding panicked customers away from a café which, wouldn’t you know it, was currently caught in the crossfire of some kind of energy weapon, Merlin suppressed a grimace of annoyance. Because, really? _Really?_ Looking back to see his tea blown to smithereens— _the only decent cup in Manhattan_ —Merlin sighed inwardly and wondered to himself if, having thwarted the phenomenon for the past millennia and a half, he’d ever manage to catch a break.

 

Shoving a hysterical stock broker out of the path of falling rubble, he concluded that God, the universe and all things magical hated him, and the answer was an emphatic _not bloody likely_.

 

Merlin cast about to see if there was some way he could foist fleeing people off on _someone who wasn’t him_ so he could maybe, possibly, take care of whatever amateur was shooting apart a truly lovely array of wrought iron tables and chairs. Really, most places didn’t invest in that kind of permanence these days, it was a nice touch, and they had _damn good tea_. As it were, it would now take him days to find a decent cup of tea in this bloody city, as the one he’d ordered was presumably reduced to its original molecular structure. _Bugger_.

 

Catching sight of a telltale hat, Merlin inwardly groaned with relief. He never thought he’d be so happy to see a copper in his life. First time for everything, right?  
  
Calling the uniformed man over with a sufficiently authoritative voice—might’ve been the accent, either way, it worked—he alerted the bemused man to the people he’d smooshed into an alley taking cover behind a dumpster, gave the bloke a pat on the cheek with a “don’t think too hard about it” and dashed off in the direction the shooting had moved before the officer’s indignant voice could form actual words.

 

The gun toting moron had managed to move down a few blocks, indiscriminately shooting things, like you do. He seemed to be shouting between volleys of energy bursts into the surrounding buildings. Merlin couldn’t quite make out the noise, but body language told the warlock he was issuing a challenge. If Merlin were a more nostalgic person, he’d say it sounded a lot like throwing down a gauntlet, but with more… exploding.

 

_Whatever_.

 

Standing in the shadows of an alleyway, Merlin quickly glanced around to see if anybody was stupid enough to stick around to take pictures for their facebook, because, really? There were _so many cell phone videos_ from that alien invasion last year up on the web, and a lot of them looked to be taken by people who were about to be stabbed by pointy, glinting energy spears, or exploded by some sort of—

 

Oh. Oh _wonderful_.

 

“Bloodly hell,” Merlin muttered in disbelief as he readjusted his position in the alley, angling to get a better look.

 

Well fuck bloody everything, the raving idiot was swinging a damned _Chitauri_ blaster about! How had he not blown off his own legs, yet? Hadn’t SHIELD and the US Army and just about every shady government agency in the United States gone on a crusade to recover the weapons? Hadn’t they _assured_ that since the Chitauri themselves had been killed by portal closing up that the weapons wouldn’t function anyway?

 

Bloody lying incompetent secret agencies.

 

Really? It would be so nice to just stroll up to him and snatch the gun, berate him for spilling his tea and contributing to the continued destruction of New York City before pistol-whipping him into unconsciousness with the alien weaponry.

 

Unfortunately, he’d probably have to use magic to avoid being incinerated before getting close enough to do so, and people might talk, and then it would be a lot less of the _“My hero!”_ and more of the _“We need to debrief you concerning the circumstances surrounding your apprehension and subsequent assault of a man with a Chitauri weapon”_. He’d been down that path with MI-6; it was bloody lucky he’d been the eighty-year old man at the time and in the process of cultivating another identity. Hadn’t been too hard to trick the wankers with a faked death and disappearance, and _voila_! Merlin still under the radar, back to being a strapping young lad, and off to be a graduate student for the umpteenth time.

 

God. He was so sick of grad school.

 

But really. _Jesus_ , the twenty-first century. The world had enough bloody superheroes without an ancient, magical, glorified guard dog throwing his hat into the ring.  Why couldn’t he have faded into mythological academic obscurity like the Norse gods?

 

Well, that hadn’t really worked out so well for them, either, but… Disney? _Disney_?

 

Honestly, though? He should have just brought his damn pistol. People in America loved their bloody guns, nobody’d have thought twice if he just shot the bastard for vaporizing his tea.

 

Probably.

 

Satisfied that, at the very least, the source of his magic would be concealed (the effects… likely not), Merlin stretched out a hand toward the man who now seemed to be howling in triumph as—

 

_Wsssht—fmCLANK_

 

“You rang?”

 

Snatching his arm back, Merlin resisted the urge to growl in frustration, because _now there’s this fucking guy_.

 

Repulsors aimed at stupid-shooter, Iron Man seemed pretty unfazed by the whole ordeal. Shutting his ears to the banter he knew that the man inside the suit would get up to, Merlin conceded that the situation was probably under control, and he could slink back to his hotel and morosely order room service.

 

They probably wouldn’t judge him for ordering cocktails at 11:30AM. It was, after all, New York.

 

Shuffling his feet and attempting to divest his black— _black_ , what was he _thinking?_ —jeans of concrete dust, Merlin was scowling his way down Madison when a decidedly emphatic _BOOM_ sounded in the direction from which he’d come. He’d barely turned his head to glare indignantly in the direction of the noise when a volley of energy blasts found their way to the structures directly in his path of travel.

 

_Well, shit_ , Merlin thought, diving away from the falling rubble. Damn the jeans, there’d be holes in them now, too.

 

Watching stupid-shooter ducking and weaving his way around Iron Man’s repulsor blasts just two blocks away, Merlin didn’t quite register the presence of Captain America having it out with a _second_ stupid-shooter—what the hell? This is why he didn’t fight crime. Or terrorists. Or _anyone_.—until they were almost upon him where he lay gawping from his sprawled position beside the rubble.

 

The news reels really, _really_ hadn’t done him justice. Captain America was an absolute hunk of flesh, which—

 

_—should really be the last thing on my bloody mind_ , he berated himself as he pushed up and out of the rubble. He briefly eyed the abrasions on his palms with distaste as his movement momentarily distracted stupid-shooter two (a lifetime ago he’d learned that misdirection was a key element of battle strategy), giving _Captain America_ the opportunity to hurl his shield at the man and render him unconscious.

 

Merlin watched, partially mesmerized, as the shield ricocheted back into the Captain’s waiting arm before the man’s gaze swiftly turned on him. Ruthlessly choking back an undignified noise, the warlock settled for a single step in retreat as he rubbed one of his tender palms.

 

_Damn it, Merlin, look_ scared, _not turned on_.

 

The man was nary twelve feet from him! His rebellious stomach fluttered when the hulking male specimen’s intension to approach him became clear. _Ack_. Blonde men shouldn’t be able to do this to him after more than fourteen centuries, fourteen centuries should be the bloody _cut-off_ at least _._

 

“Are you alright?” The Captain asked, vaulting the small pile of rubble to come up next to him.

 

Merlin goggled. _Say something say something say something_ —

 

“Uhhh,” he responded articulately, really hoping the rock dust was covering the hot blush he felt engulfing his face as he craned his neck to look into those concerned blue eyes— _blue._ Blue like water, blue like the lake, blue like Arth—

 

“You need to find shelter, go underground if you can. Keep off the streets,” he said, obviously interpreting Merlin’s dick-whammied inarticulacy for shock as he took a step back, hefting the shield and loping off in the direction that stupid-shooter one had gone.

 

“ _Bollocks_ ,” Merlin sighed to himself, cradling his stinging palms as he wistfully watched Captain America bound off after the idiot with the alien gun.

 

_Hate to see you go, but love to watch you leave_.

 

Watching the Captain disappear around a corner, Merlin ducked into a walkway between high rises—keeping his ears _open_ this time, thank you—hoping to minimize his exposure to the open streets as he navigated his way to his hotel. Perhaps if the cosmos wasn’t behind on its “ruin Merlin’s perpetual existence” quota, said existence would remain unscathed. His cocktail situation had just been upgraded to status: _leave the bottle_.

 

The whine of an energy weapon and the sounds of exploding concrete weren’t too far away, but it’s not like they were too close for comfort. Keeping a weather eye on the path ahead of him in relation to what he was hearing, he briefly considered just how often New York City found itself the center of mass destruction. Shit must suck, really.

 

Then again, London never seemed to have its shortage of extraordinary happenstance and alien invasions—especially around Christmas, which was just bollocks—so he wasn’t in a position to criticize. From what he could see, the inhabitants of downtown were well versed in the “lunatic blowing things up, seek shelter and wait it out” routine. The streets were empty.

 

The rooftops, however—

 

Merlin’s head snapped up as another explosion sounded nearby. He was just coming out onto the street as he saw stupid-shooter throwing himself behind an abandoned vehicle to avoid one of Iron Man’s rockets. The car itself exploded, but the shooter just used the smoke to his advantage as he scored a direct hit on Iron Man. _Seriously?_ This clown was leading the bloody Avengers on a merry dance through downtown? Come the fuck _on_. Were they all hung-over?

 

Captain America seemed to be yelling into a communications device as he dashed toward where Iron Man lay on the remains of a taxi, and Merlin’s head swiveled back to the movement on the rooftops that had caught his eye.

 

_Hawkeye_.

 

The archer was barely a speck in his vision, but Merlin saw the tell-tale black arc of an arrow zip from Hawkeye’s position on the rooftop directly into the space of the shooter. Well, at least _one_ of the blokes on this team seemed to have a plan. It was short lived, however, when the arrow in question unfortunately exploded a few nanoseconds too late to incapacitate the resident destructive moron, and the bastard managed to fire off a few well aimed blasts of his weapon and completely dislodge Hawkeye from his perch.

 

While Merlin’s eyes widened as he toppled off of a building that must be at least _fifty fucking stories_ , he heard no discernable screams of impending death by splat. Maybe the continued fire of the energy weapon was covering it up?

 

This notion was disregarded when the archer simply twisted in the air as he plummeted 9m/s2 toward the pavement and fired off another arrow. _Really, now?_ Merlin followed in astonishment as the arrow buried itself in the opposite building, an apparent grappling device designed for such situations. Bravo, engineers! Must’ve been a fucking task rigging _that_ one.

 

The warlock’s admiration was cut short, however, when another well-aimed (or perhaps random and unfortunate) blast obliterated the anchor of the grapple, and the archer found himself in freefall once more. He jerked his body again and fired off another arrow, but even as the projectile found its mark in the concrete many stories directly above Merlin’s head, the warlock could see that the distance was too great. In barely two seconds, everything had gone to shit.

 

_He’s going to die_.

 

Whirling around to watch the archer as he sailed through the air yelling furiously into his communications device, gripping the line, Merlin couldn’t make out his expression— _fearregretacceptance_ —but found himself nonetheless filled with a sense of panic. Before he could stop himself, he felt time slow around him, movement and sound coalescing into a whisper as he surveyed his surroundings critically.

 

Captain America deflecting energy projectile with shield: distracted.

 

Iron Man launching himself at the shooter from atop the ruined taxi: distracted.

 

Street: astonishingly, deserted.

 

Looking up at Hawkeye swinging to his death in slow motion, Merlin could only think of one way to stop this, and it absolutely _reeked_ of the bloody stupid first time he’d met Gaius.

 

This had better not turn out the same goddamn way, or he and _destiny_ were going to have fucking _words_.

 

He waited the brief seconds until Hawkeye was close enough, the man bunched in on himself as he braced for impact, before his eyes glowed and several things happened at once.

 

The cord snapped taut—

 

Iron Man tackled the shooter—

 

A pressure wave smacked into Hawkeye—

 

Captain America shouted—

 

Merlin dove away—

 

Iron Man and the shooter disappear in a blast—

 

When Merlin opened his eyes, it was to a settling cloud of dust and the weight of Hawkeye’s bemused gaze leveled on him from where he was standing several meters away from the undignified heap of warlock on the ground.

 

Merlin coughed, concrete dust once again ruining his day, and watched as the archer departed, barely limping, with a long look at where Merlin lay sprawled. No thanks or accusations to betray knowledge of his rescue, just… back to work.

 

_Well, that could have gone worse._

**Author's Note:**

> Some sort of ridiculous Avengers/Merlin Merthur plot will come of this someday, I swear. As it stands: drabble. Crack? I don't know. You tell me. I have things written, but Star Trek is my constant distraction.
> 
> ONE DAY.
> 
> Also, I'm American. Be gentle.


End file.
